TY - JOUR TI -

Development of Concepts in Infancy and Early Childhood: Cognitive and Neural Bases

T2 - Psychology. Journal of Higher School of Economics IS - Psychology. Journal of Higher School of Economics KW - cognitive development KW - categorization KW - category learning KW - concept development KW - lexicalization KW - long-term memory KW - infancy KW - early childhood AB - The present article contains a review of contemporary research on the development of concepts in children in infancy and early childhood. Human concepts underlie such fundamental cognitive functions as thinking, problem solving, planning, and decision making. The research on children's formation of concepts has recently been gaining popularity in cognitive developmental psychology. The main topics are determining the type of categories available to children for learning, establishing the age boundaries in which this learning typically occurs, and the factors that influence success. This review will present essential contemporary research demonstrating that the development of concepts and categories in infancy and early childhood is the basis for many speech- and language-based cognitive processes. In addition, we will also discuss the possibilities of using language and verbalization to develop categorization ability and category learning at different ages, and whether training in verbalization ability could help children at an earlier age to learn different types of categories and to be aware of the categorization rules. The effects of early categorization are structured in the review in regards to two directions of study of concept development: multiple systems learning theory and the problematics of the categorization level development. The structural and functional features of preverbal categorization observed in infancy are described. We show that the development of concepts and categories at an early age, after the acquisition of speech, supports the formation of basic cognitive functions: long-term memory, selective attention and distributed attention, and inductive inference. The experimental data and theoretical concepts presented in this review are virtually underreported in the Russian academic literature. AU - Tatyana Kotova AU - Alexey Kotov UR - https://psy-journal.hse.ru/en/2022-19-3/782570053.html PY - 2022 SP - 626-641 VL - 19